


Real Men

by Bluewolf458



Category: The Sentinel
Genre: Gen, Sentinel Bingo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-13
Updated: 2018-02-13
Packaged: 2019-03-17 19:44:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,104
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13666014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bluewolf458/pseuds/Bluewolf458
Summary: William wants his sons to be Real Men





	Real Men

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the 2018 Sentinel Bingo prompt 'wounded'

 

Real Men

By Bluewolf

Jim Ellison was far more sensitive than he allowed anyone to see.

He was not quite five when he realized that their mother loved his younger brother more than she loved him. That day, he found a quiet corner and curled up in it, tears running down his face. His father found him there roughly half an hour later, and looked down at him unsympathetically.

"What are you blubbering about?"

Jimmy sniffed. "Mom likes Stevie more than she likes me."

"So?"

"Shouldn't she like us the same?"

"Why should she? But even if she does like Stevie more, it's nothing for you to cry about. Real men suck up their problems and don't cry about them. Real men don't cry, whatever happens. And you want to be known as a real man, don't you, not a crybaby."

"Yes," he whispered. It was the only answer he could give, the only answer he knew, even as young as he was, that his father would accept.

***

When Grace Ellison walked out some three years later, Jimmy found it fairly easy to remain apparently unmoved. That time it was Stevie who cried, and who got the lecture about being a real man.

Jimmy tried to comfort his brother, and their father caught him giving Stevie a reassuring hug.

He was not pleased. It was not behavior befitting real men. Real men stood on their own two feet and relied on nobody.

From then on, William Ellison made almost a hobby of pitting his sons against each other, trying to convince them that hard-headed selfishness was the only road to success. His criticism, when Jimmy gave Stevie a birthday present later that year, was brutal. "Giving presents is just showing you're weak. You don't give, you take!" he growled.

Jimmy had more than a passing suspicion that this attitude was what had driven his Mom away. His Dad didn't seen to understand how much his attitude wounded his sons. Especially Jimmy.

Certainly, as the years passed, Stevie didn't seem as badly affected by William's unceasing criticism as Jimmy. Trying to win William's approval was turning Stevie into a selfish, inconsiderate brat who regularly lied, blaming Jimmy for things he had done.

The breaking point, for Jimmy, came when Stevie took a crowbar to their father's valuable Cobra, then blamed Jimmy for it. William flatly refused to believe Jimmy's denial, and took Stevie on his next planned trip abroad.

It was too much. Hurt beyond bearing, Jim packed a few clothes and left home to join the army.

***

Jim was subject to relentless discipline in the army, as well, but it was an impersonal discipline that didn't wound his soul. And he did well in the army, rising to the rank of Captain as quickly as it was possible to do. From that aspect, William's training in selfishness worked.

And then eventually he was stranded, for eighteen months, in Peru; alone, the rest of his team dead. When he was finally rescued and returned to America, he discovered that no search had been made for them at the time, that the search had finally been made because of a satellite picture of a downed Huey and seven graves.

He had always assumed that - although with the loss of the Huey's radio he hadn't been able to make any reports - his team had simply been left there because of pressing demands on the army's time elsewhere. And he was surprised how much it hurt to discover that they had simply been written off as dead. And so, instead of re-upping, as he had always meant to do, he took the honorable discharge he was due.

And over the next months, although he remembered his time in Peru with some nostalgia, he began to forget details of his life there.

Not sure where to go, what to do, he was surprised when his feet took him back to Cascade. Not that he had any intention of contacting his father or his brother - although he was forced to do so when he married, and that was when he discovered that his mother wasn't Grace; Grace was his stepmother. God, no wonder she liked Stevie - her actual son - more than she'd liked him! And the knowledge stung. Why couldn't his father have told him that, even when he was five? It gave him another reason to reject his father. Carolyn tried to encourage him to invite William to visit, but he flatly refused. Bad enough that he had been forced to invite his father to the wedding!

That was one of the things that eventually led to their divorce.

***

In a way, it was sheer self-defense that led Jim to project a bad-tempered, easily-irritated, attitude-on-two-legs persona at the PD. He had a casual friendship with Jack Pendergrast. Enough that for the second time in his life he gave someone a birthday present... and just a few days later Jack disappeared.

He was sure that Jack hadn't done a runner with the ransom money he was delivering... but it seemed that everyone else did, and it made Jim even more prickly. Because it really wounded him that nobody else seemed to consider looking for another reason for Jack's disappearance.

***

After that, Jim decided he wanted to work alone - and because nobody else wanted to work with Jim, and Jim, on his own, was still a very effective detective, Captain Banks allowed it.

Until the day Jim showed up with a young grad student, asking Simon to give the kid a ride-along pass, because he wanted to study the working of the police for a PhD dissertation.

Simon agreed - reluctantly - but on the day when Jim took Blair in to get his credentials, Garett Kincaid and his men took over the station... and Blair (even though he insisted he was only trying to survive) helped to defeat them and capture Kincaid. Simon realized then that the kid was an asset.

And Jim quickly discovered that despite his own habitual defense of his feelings, that had been so often hurt over the years, Blair was totally forgiving.

Blair managed what Carolyn had failed to do - get him talking to his father and brother again. He knew he could never give either the unqualified love Blair gave his mother - William's wounding criticism when he was a child, Steven's wounding selfishness over the same years - made that inevitable.

But with Blair, for the first time in his life, Jim found himself no longer afraid of the sensitive nature of his mind.

For the first time in his life, he knew that he was happy.


End file.
